Wells Fargo Boosts Dividend by 14% to 25 Cents

By Michael Aneiro

If you’re shopping for dividendsat your local bank, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) just said it’s boosting its quarterly common stock dividend by 3 cents, or 14%, to 25 cents per share, payable March 1 to stockholders as of Feb. 1.

“The dividend increase approved by our board today was included in our 2012 Capital Plan and reflected the confidence we have in our company’s performance,” said John Stumpf, Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO, in a statement. “We remain committed to returning more capital to our shareholders. We requested an increase in capital distributions in our 2013 Capital Plan as compared to our 2012 plan, subject to review and non-objection by the Federal Reserve Board.”

WFC shares were recently up by 11 cents after hours to $35.15, yielding 2.85% now, up from 2.51% previously.

Amey Stone is Barron’s Income Investing blogger and Current Yield columnist. She was formerly a managing editor at CBS MoneyWatch, MSN Money and AOL DailyFinance. Her responsibilities included overseeing market coverage and personal finance topics. Prior to those roles, she was a senior writer at BusinessWeek where she authored the Street Wise column online and contributed to the magazine’s Inside Wall Street column. Topics covered included economics, corporate finance, Fed policy, municipal bonds, mutual funds and dividend investing. She co-authored King of Capital, a biography of Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill. She is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.